“The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor’s shortcomings as he is of his own.”

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one’s own life.

Language was invented to ask questions.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable then those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence.

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.

All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.